Let me show you the backdoor: Find a company whose open source projects you are interested in. Dive in and and start fixing things. Then if you really like it after a couple weeks start nudging around for a job. If you do good work they'll just give it to you, no bullshit funnel required. I like this method because you aren't just doing l33t coding exercises to work on some sight unseen codebase that makes you suicid…
I actively hire this way.
Do you give the newhires backpay?
Mostly joking but I don't think such a bonus is a crazy idea
What do you mean? I had a job the entire time, and I interviewed at MSFT and NFLX in the meantime. Otherwise i would just periodically check in with my G recruiter trying to balance some urgency with politeness. I didn’t get an offer from NFLX but they came across extremely well, i’m very bullish on the company solely based on the culture and talent I met. The MSFT experience was the exact opposite!
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but referring to companies by their stock tickers in casual conversation does not impress anyone.
Pretty sure it wasn't to impress anyone, but to save keystrokes. In both cases the stock ticker is shorter than the company name, and everyone instantly knows what you're talking about.
> Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"? Having low outgoings. While I would prefer to have income (I'm hoping to be able to buy a house at some point), I'm a single person with no dependents, and I probably spend around £1200/month in total (including rent). And that's in London - one of the most expensive cities in the world -…
This is very impressive and difficult to maintain in London. Rent for a "double" room - meaning a room in a flat/apartment or house that fits a US full or European double bed is like 900/month right now. Spending only 1200/month is very difficult to achieve. I have no idea how this is feasible. To add to rent, local stores are usually more expensive than the supermarkets. Maybe you ought to make a masterclass on this…
Well my rent is only £600/month which helps a lot. It's in a less popular neighbourhood, but it's still in Zone 2 with good transport links and it's very nice.
Yeah there is a lot of space between "has savings for 8-12 months" and "is independently wealthy, i.e. can live off interest of their own savings". Former is extremely easy to achieve if you can save significant portions of your salary. If you can save 30%, you can achieve it after 3 years. Latter takes a bit longer.
I've always had an extremely tenous grasp on consistently being employed, and know getting fired is just around the corner. Therefore, saving about 6-12 months of expenses is first step, then I'm allowed to start spending more than $100/m or whatever here and there on stuff. I usually end up needing that savings because getting a new job can easily take that long, and so by the beginning of age 30 this year I was bac…
Are you choosing the right environments to work in? What do you find is the reason for instability in employment?
Let me show you the backdoor: Find a company whose open source projects you are interested in. Dive in and and start fixing things. Then if you really like it after a couple weeks start nudging around for a job. If you do good work they'll just give it to you, no bullshit funnel required. I like this method because you aren't just doing l33t coding exercises to work on some sight unseen codebase that makes you suicid…
Yup can confirm, after a decent contribution to a known apache project, had three well known companies reach out, two of which the engineering manager was the one reaching out.
Would love to know more. What project was it? Did you contribute wanting a job or was interested any way? Did you get a job through this strategy?
I took ~1.5 years off after 12+ years of FAANG. 1 month ago, I decided I was ready to work again and started talking to recruiters for real. It's been very slow. Most positions I've applied to, I've heard nothing back, even when referred by a current employee. I've had some flat rejections without even a recruiter chat. One recruiter called me to say they were on a temporary hiring freeze, and then she got laid off.…
Fill the gap with something technical. Start a company, work on a tech related side project, etc.
Yeah there is a lot of space between "has savings for 8-12 months" I think there is a mentality difference here. I have savings that would easily last me 10 years of not working. But... that's kind of my plan. I will be retiring some day. I don't want to use up even a dime of that money by not working in my prime earning years.
A good friend of mine spent his life being pretty frugal. Saved up a nice chunk of change, too -- his wife is also a software developer, they both made good money. Got cancer early last year and was dead 10 months later. 55 years old. Ugh. Not saying you should run out and spend your nest egg. On the other hand, I'd be reluctant to suffer too much during my prime working years scrimping and saving for a retirement th…
Sorry about your friend. My wife also had a friend in the same boat. Made it to 59 and heart attack. Statistically they are outliers, though. For every one of those cases there are probably 10 that make it long past a normal retirement age and 2 that make it beyond 90 years or so. Given the choice, I’d rather be prepared for a 30 year retirement and unluckily die early than be prepared for a 5 year retirement and live to see 90, eating dog food.
I work for a startup whose equity I consider worthless, 180 base.
Can I ask what industry and your seniority (And maybe whether you’re doing 80h weeks?) Been considering a move, trying to calibrate myself on what I’m actually worth.
I got connected to someone impacted at Twitter on Saturday, within 24 hours of them being notified they were impacted by the layoff. I talked with them for an hour that next Monday AM about the opportunities my teams have open, one of which was highly relevant to their skills, and by the time we chatted, they had 3-4 interviews with other companies scheduled. Joined the dots to the hiring manager and recruiters. They…
I don't like Elon either but am happy he's blown $44m on a side project that it looks like is going to fail
and then blamed everyone "hating free speech" for why it's failing lol
> but likely this next week I'll start studying and getting ready.
Studying?? For a job interview? Do you seriously need to do whiteboard algorithm reverse a linked list kinda coding as a senior in the US? Or what is it that you need to study before an interview?